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What B2B Marketers Need to Know about Google Marketing Platform

At the end of June (2018) Google introduced the new Google Marketing Platform. The new experience brings together DoubleClick Digital Marketing and the Google Analytics 360 Suite to help marketers “plan, buy, measure and optimize digital media and customer experiences in one place.”

Google Marketing Platform for B2B Marketers

At SmartAcre®, we are in Google Ads and Analytics every day, looking for ways to increase SEO site traffic and ad performance to improve lead and demand generation for our clients. We tend to think about things a little differently since we are not just a PPC agency or SEO shop. We dream about the customer journey and live for lead-to-revenue reporting. With that said, here is our take on the changes – not just what they mean for B2B marketers – but how they will impact your entire lead and demand generation strategy.

Mobile Page Speed Matters

It is no surprise that page speed matters to Google, but now they want you to take mobile even more seriously. The July 2018 algorithm update is factoring mobile page load times into organic ranking.

Google Marketing Platform Mobile Page Speed Matters Graphic
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What you need to know about Mobile Page Speed:

  • Marketers should work smarter, not harder. Stop spending hours upon hours only optimizing ad creative and copy when your mobile pages take forever to load. UX matters!
  • Consider Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). AMP pages are designed to load in under 1 second. That’s 85 percent faster than standard mobile pages.
  • Mobile also matters for paid and can impact ad performance. A new Landing Page tab is coming to Google Ads to allow you to view ad performance by landing page URL and see the mobile page speed score. If your pages score a 6 or lower, it will probably have an impact on your ROI.

Google Ad Changes

Google Ads is more than just a rebrand. There are new features that represent the full range of marketing capabilities across Search, Display, YouTube and more.

Google Marketing Platform Google Ad Changes

What you need to know about Ad Changes:

  • Google is asking you to think less about optimizing budgets and trust them more. They are adding a lot of new opportunities to use machine learning so you can spend less time adjusting bids and more time thinking about (and improving) the bigger picture.
  • They are changing tracking to improve speed. By October 30th, parallel tracking will be mandatory. Get ahead of it.
  • YouTube is tapping into all of the different behaviors people take and giving marketers the opportunity to hit users in every stage of the funnel with new features like TrueView for Reach, Maximize Lift Bid Strategy, and TrueView for Action.
  • Responsive Search Ads (RSA) are one of the biggest changes we are looking forward to as an agency. Thank you Google, we will take the 90 percent more text and the option to have up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions.

Why We Love TrueView for Action

Ali Miller, Group Product Manager at YouTube Ads, shared more details on TrueView for Action during Marketing Live 2018. We are specifically excited to try TrueView for Action because it offers an action button directly below YouTube video ads. It’s a neat way of providing clear calls to action and conversion opportunities. It sounds like Google also has plans to introduce a form directly within YouTube videos to generate leads. We want to get our hands on this feature to look into lead routing and syncing this data with Marketing Automation (MA) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms.

Tips for Google Responsive Ads

We are also excited to try Google Responsive Ads – a brand new ad type on search. Google is touting that this will help marketers focus on the message while they find the combinations of messages that resonate most with their audience.

OK Google, can B2B marketers trust you?

That is yet to be determined, but we look forward to experiencing the testing and optimization perks. Marketers will still have some control. For example, Google will allow you to pin content in the first position so that it is always included in the first part of the headline (like your brand) to ensure it appears in every responsive ad.

Sylvanus Bent, Product Manager Google Ads, shared some tips during the Google Marketing Live 2018 post keynote show. He encouraged marketers to take risks and be creative, focusing on headlines, and taking advantage of providing as much unique content as possible.  

RSAs are still in beta, but be on the lookout and think ahead as Google rolls this out over the next several months. But don’t ditch Extended Text Ads. Instead, consider how you can use them to test different messages before throwing them into an RSA campaign.

Key Takeaways for B2B Marketers

While it may seem that features in the Google Marketing Platform are more B2C focused, keep this in mind. Even your B2B audience is a B2C contact beyond the 9-5. As a B2B (or a B2C) marketer, you are competing with the best experience that a prospect has ever had. For example, business or consumer, we live in a world that we can navigate with just our voice (OK Google, what’s the weather like today?).

Don’t lose sight of the business to HUMAN component of marketing. All of Google’s changes focus on creating the best possible user experience.

Google Marketing Platform Key Takeaways for B2B Marketers
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If you keep one thing in mind when planning your next marketing campaign, look at it from the perspective of an actual person, and not just a prospect.

Google Marketing Platform Features

As our team gets access to the new features and starts to roll-out changes for our clients, we will share more information, how-to’s and best practices. Subscribe to our blog to stay in touch. Otherwise, feel free to connect with our team if you are looking for help with mobile ads, or if you would like to expand your Google Ad strategy into a multi-touch lead generation program.